Cicero and the People’s Will
Philosophy and Power at the End of the Roman Republic

The first book to show how Cicero invented the idea of 'the will of the people' and its ramifications today.

Lex Paulson (Author)

9781009077385, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 January 2025

286 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.417 kg

'… an ambitious study that tackles an enormous body of evidence and offers an engaging and wide-ranging account of the multiple dimensions of the Latin term voluntas in Cicero's literary corpus. It will be of value to all those interested in the social, political, and intellectual history of the late Roman republic.' Sean McConnell, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

This book tells an overlooked story in the history of ideas, a drama of cut-throat politics and philosophy of mind. For it is Cicero, statesman and philosopher, who gives shape to the notion of will in Western thought, from criminal will to moral willpower and 'the will of the people'. In a single word – voluntas – he brings Roman law in contact with Greek ideas, chief among them Plato's claim that a rational elite must rule. When the republic falls to Caesarism, Cicero turns his political argument inward: Will is a force in the soul to win the virtue lost on the battlefield, the mark of inner freedom in an unfree age. Though this constitutional vision failed in his own time, Cicero's ideals of popular sovereignty and rational elitism have shaped and fractured the modern world – and Ciceronian creativity may yet save it.

Part I. The Practice of Voluntas: 1. Forebears of will
2. Innocence and intent
3. Cartographies of power
4. An economy of goodwill
5. Voluntas populi: the will of the people
Part II. The philosophy of voluntas: 6. Willpower
7. Free will and the forum
8. The fourfold self.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]